One view of the internet is the connection of clients, such as personal computers, tablets, smart phones, servers, digital photo-frames, and many other types of devices to publicly-accessible data-centers hosted in server farms. However, this picture represents a small portion of the overall usage of the globally-connected network. A very large number of connected resources currently exist, but are not publicly accessible. Examples include corporate networks, private organizational control and monitoring networks spanning the globe, and peer to peer relays designed for anonymity.
The Internet of Things (IoT) may bring Internet connectivity to as many as 50 billion devices by 2020. For organizations, IoT devices may provide opportunities for monitoring, tracking, or controlling other devices and items, including further IoT devices, other home and industrial devices, items in manufacturing and food production chains, and the like. Further, the emergence of IoT networks has served as a catalyst for profound change in the evolution of the internet. In the future, the internet is likely to evolve from a primarily human-oriented utility to an infrastructure where humans may eventually be minority actors in an interconnected world of devices.
In this view, the internet will become a communications system for devices, and networks of devices, to not only communicate with data centers, but with each other. The devices may form functional networks to perform functions, which may dissolve once the function is performed. Challenges exist in enabling reliable, secure, and identifiable devices that can form networks as needed to accomplish tasks.